109 pages • 3 hours read
Katherine PatersonLyddie
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Bear
The bear that enters the Worthen cabin is the catalyst for Lyddie’s eventual loss of her family’s farm, and the reader learns about Lyddie through the way she responds to the bear. She is calm and resolute, while her mother reacts emotionally. Lyddie instructs her family to proceed up the ladder to the attic, staring down the bear and maintaining eye contact until she can climb the ladder herself. Her success in handling the confrontation with this dangerous and unpredictable animal serves as an inspiration and affirmation to her when she faces future challenges. The image of the bear repeats throughout the novel, symbolizing difficult obstacles that Lyddie must overcome with courage and determination. When she returns to her cabin and realizes there is someone else there, she reflects, “It was her house, after all, and what was one measly man, black or white, compared to a bear?” (39).
When she awakens on her first night at the boardinghouse, in the grogginess after a long night of sleep, Lyddie thinks that she is back in the cabin. “At first she thought it was the bear, clanging the oatmeal pot against the furniture, but then the tiny attic came alive with girls” (52).
As the looms speed up and she begins taking responsibility for four of them at once, Lyddie feels confident in tackling this daunting task. She conceives of the looms as “her bears,” large and dangerous, but manageable when she has her wits about her (126). She likens all her greatest challenges and obstacles to facing down the bear, and at the climactic moment when she decides to punish Mr. Marsden for his odious behavior, there is a striking similarity between how Mr. Marsden is deterred by Lyddie and how the bear was. The bear leaves Lyddie’s house after getting his head caught in a cauldron full of porridge. When Lyddie slams a water bucket onto Mr. Marsden’s head, he is rendered as innocuous and bumbling as the bear was.
One of Lyddie’s pivotal moments of transformation in the novel is when she realizes that the obstacle of the bear is an internal one and not an external one, that her limits are defined by her own talents and capabilities and not the forces that bear down upon her. Her resolution as she thinks of Oberlin is this: “She would stare down all the bears!” (181).
The Shuttle
The shuttle symbolizes the operation of the weaving machines themselves; the shuttle is the primary tool the weaver uses over the course of a workday. Shaped like a canoe, the shuttle holds the bobbin, around which is wrapped the thread. The shuttle is rocketed back and forth in the “race” track that carries it at incredible speed as it is knocked from one end to the other to leave behind each new warp thread. As the shuttle zips from side to side, it creates the yardage for which the weaver is paid. When Concord Corporation’s supervisors increase the velocity of the machines to obtain their own bonuses, the shuttles achieve frantic efficiency as they rush along with the ever-heightening pace of the looms.
When Lyddie is hit by the shuttle, her sense of control over her machines and her belief in her competence and presence of mind is dashed; work she excelled in has literally backfired against her and placed her in a vulnerable position. Despite her tenacity and skill, there are conditions with which Lyddie cannot compete, like the exhaustion that overcomes her and likely leads to the mistake with the shuttle. An unthreaded shuttle represents a less violent but more dangerous, invisible threat to the factory workers. The nickname “kiss of death” refers to the risk of contracting highly contagious and potentially deadly viral and bacterial illnesses from one’s fellow employees by placing one’s mouth on the shuttle. As a symbol, the shuttle encompasses the many juxtaposed opportunities and threats presented by work as a weaver in a 19th-century textile mill.
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist is Lyddie’s introduction to the world of fiction, and it is fitting because the story of the titular character mirror’s Lyddie’s experience in the common themes of poverty, vulnerability, loneliness, and self-reliance. It is her excitement over learning what will happen next to Oliver Twist that engages Lyddie in interests outside her role at the mill. Through her enjoyment of the book, she learns to love fiction and to extend her interests to other genres. She painstakingly copies the pages of the book onto paper that she pastes to her loom so that she can engage with the story and improve her reading comprehension skills. The book also brings her closer to Betsy as Betsy reads it aloud to her. Lyddie has always functioned as the responsible elder in her family, but Betsy’s reading shows her some of the kindness and nurturing she lacked from her mother. Oliver also reminds Lyddie of her brother Charlie, and the theme of starvation in Oliver Twist reminds her of her siblings when they struggled for food and resources with their father gone and their mother emotionally absent.
Betsy’s dream to attend Oberlin becomes Lyddie’s dream after Betsy is overtaken by her illness and forced to return home to Maine. Like Lyddie, Betsy was forced to care for her family by paying her brother’s way at college, and by the time her brother is finished with his education, and she can finally invest in herself, it is too late for Betsy to enjoy the benefits of her own hard work. It is partly in honor of Betsy and the hunger for knowledge she instilled in Lyddie that Lyddie decides to pursue a college education.
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